Thunderstorm
by TheNextFolchart
Summary: Somehow, Rowena knows that this time he isn't coming back. / Voted Best Founder One-Shot in the Fan-Picked Fanfiction Awards!


**Thunderstorm**

_For Jess_

* * *

The first time Rowena lets her daughter see her cry is when Salazar walks out into a thunderstorm and slams the door behind him.

Somehow, Rowena knows that this time he isn't coming back.

She throws herself across her bed and cries into her arms, and when a five-year-old Helena comes over to pat her mother's shoulder, Rowena clings to her daughter as if she's all she has left in the world.

* * *

She gets married again when Helena is six, and together Rowena and her new husband have a baby. Simone, they name her: Simone Black, and the four of them walk down the street together and listen to strangers coo over what a nice little family they made.

Helena tells everyone who will listen that she isn't part of this family; she isn't a Black, she's a _Slytherin_, and just because her mother stitched together a new family doesn't mean that the old one ceases to exist.

"Hush," Rowena tells her, but Helena is not the type of girl to keep her opinions to herself, and by the time she's seven the family outings have stopped.

"I just want Daddy to come home," Helena says quietly one night, and Rowena tries to smile while she squeezes her husband's hand.

* * *

Simone grows up to be lovelier than Helena—everyone knows it, even if no one will say it—and she shakes her dark curls and throws back her head and _laughs _like nothing in the world has ever hurt her, and Rowena thinks that maybe she can learn to be happy again.

"What on _Earth _is so funny?" she asks Simone when she's five.

"Everything." Simone wriggles around on her bed like a puppy, and Rowena presses into her daughter's shoulders to make her sit still so she can brush out those curls. Helena has curls too, but hers are golden, hers look like _his_, and Rowena is glad that Salazar left behind at least a piece of himself when he went away.

"Everything?" Rowena pulls a comb through one curl at a time, and she can feel Simone wincing, so she tries to be gentler. "Every single thing in the world is funny?"

Simone nods her head, and then lets out a yelp as the comb tugs at a tangle.

"What do you think is the funniest thing of all?" Rowena picks a blue ribbon from her vanity and ties it in a tight bow around Simone's hair, holding it back from her face like a crown.

Simone has to think about it for a moment. "Daddy is," she decides, and she slips off the bed and runs to the mirror on her side of the room she shares with Helena. "Mummy, it's beautiful." She looks up at Rowena with small, pearly teeth. "I could be a princess."

Rowena tries to meet Simone's smile. "Run along and show your very funny Daddy, then," she says, and Simone scampers away.

Somewhere in the recesses of her memory, where she has buried everything unpleasant, she can hear Helena shrieking with laughter at something Salazar has said, and it's enough to make her boil with anger and sting with pain at the same time, because Helena hasn't laughed like that since Sal slammed the door that night, and it isn't _fair_.

* * *

When Helena is seventeen she stops coming home on time.

Rowena watches her sneak in past midnight with her curls matted and lips plump and bruised, and part of her wants to snatch Helena up and keep her far away from that world, but a larger part knows that Helena cannot be stopped—how can she, when she's the spitting image of her mother?

"Be careful," she says in spite of herself when Helena comes downstairs one morning yawning.

"It's just for fun, Mum," Helena says seriously. "I'm not in love with any of them. I won't get hurt. I promise."

(Rowena _aches._)

* * *

But suddenly Helena _is _in love; she's dancing around the house and humming while she does the chores, she's letting Simone borrow her jewelry and play dress-up with her gowns, and she's talking all the time about this thing called _magic_.

"We don't use magic around the house very often, do we, Simone," Helena says one evening while Rowena eavesdrops (and Lord only knows where her husband is, he's hardly ever around anymore, and Rowena knows the only reasons she hasn't walked away from him is that she can't bring herself to leave Simone fatherless the way Helena is). "You've seen Mummy use it once or twice, I'll bet, to do the dishes or to clean up a great big mess. Have you seen her doing that? With her wand?"

"Yes," says Simone, and her eyes are the same bright blue of the ribbon Helena is tying into her curls.

"But your daddy hasn't got a wand. He doesn't do magic."

"No." Simone shrugs her shoulders. "He says he doesn't know how."

"Right. Magic is very hard to learn. Nobody really teaches it."

"Dad does magic _sometimes_," Simone says as she fidgets. "Some people can't do any magic at all, but Daddy can do it once in awhile. He hasn't got a wand, but when he's angry, he can make lightning."

"Exactly. He can't control it. It's only based on his anger. Mummy's very smart, that's why she knows how to control it. She bought herself a wand and taught herself how to do some spells."

"When I'm sad, sometimes teacups break by themselves," Simone says. "Do I have magic?"

"Sounds like it." Helena begins to weave her sister's hair into a braid. "Do you want to learn how to control it?"

Simone nods.

"Well," Helena says, wrapping a new ribbon—green this time—around the tail of Simone's braid. "The man I'm seeing, his name is Godric Gryffindor. And he wants to make a school that will teach everybody with magic how to use it properly."

Rowena reaches into her pocket and wraps her fingers around the wand she barely uses.

(Helena has never mentioned a school before.)

"Would you like to go to that school, Simone?"

Simone is grinning. "Can I?"

Helena squeezes Simone's shoulders. "Someday, when it's all finished. It's only an idea for now."

"Someday," Simone says dreamily.

Rowena tightens her grip on the wand.

_Salazar once talked about a school._

* * *

When Helena marries Godric Gryffindor, Rowena sends her off to the honeymoon with tears and hugs and cheek kisses, and she goes home to an empty house (her husband and Simone have gone to the countryside) and uses one of the spells she's been teaching herself to fill her tub with hot water.

The knock on the door comes just before she undresses for her bath.

(She knows, without knowing how she knows, that it's him.)

"Rena," he says when she opens the door, and she can't decide whether she wants to slap him or kiss him or pretend she can't remember who she is.

(She settles for silence, and he seems to understand.)

"You didn't move away," he says finally. He is still standing in the doorway; there is a light drizzle falling over his blonde hair, and in the back of her mind she can hear the thunder claps that sounded the day he walked away. "I'm glad. I would never have been able to find you."

She still says nothing.

"Helena?" he asks, peering over her shoulder into the house. "She home?"

Rowena finds her tongue. "My daughter is on her honeymoon."

"_Your_ daughter." Sal exhales slowly. "I deserve that."

"No letters," she says in a low voice, narrowing her eyes and taking a step toward him. He is wise enough to back away. "No visits. No _word _from you."

"Rena—"

"Why are you _here_?"

The drizzle has picked up into a rain, and they are soaking wet. His hair is plastered against his head and hers lies in black tangles down her back, and her heart is _pounding_ and she keeps telling herself it's because she's angry, it _has _to be,because _how can she still feel something like love toward him after all this time_?

"I heard she was getting married," Sal says. "And I wanted to see her."

"You are _not _her father anymore."

"I know I'm not."

Rowena pulls out her wand. "If you had any intelligence whatsoever, you would leave."

"Leave?" He offers her that faint grin that she'd forgotten about until _just now_. "I haven't even said I'm sorry yet."

"Say it. And then leave."

"Rena." He licks his lips, and there's something like fear in his eyes. "I'm sorry. I'm infinitely sorry. And I know my sorries will never be enough."

She exhales hard. "You want to see Helena? Go find Helena. Give your sorries to her."

"I want to see _you_." He takes a step toward her, one hand out, as if he means to grab her shoulder, but then he pulls himself back. "I—don't hex me with that thing, okay? I have a confession. I've already been to see Helena."

Rowena blinks rain from her eyes. "You're lying. She would have told me."

"I thought she did tell you, actually." Sal has his eyes trained on her wand. "She's with Godric Gryffindor now, right? Helena Gryffindor. Doesn't have as nice a ring as Helena Slytherin, I'll admit."

"Ravenclaw," Rowena says, and it's absolutely scathing. "She is Helena _Ravenclaw_."

"Fair enough, _Mrs. Black_," he shoots back. "Godric and I are business partners. We're building that school I used to talk about. So I can teach kids to use magic—same way I taught you." He gives her that grin again, and it's only habit that makes her heart flutter. "Glad to see you've kept the wand. Even if it's pointed at my heart right now."

Rowena says nothing.

"Anyway, that's how Helena found me: through Godric." Sal shrugs. "I was at the wedding—saw you, but I didn't want to cause a scene, so I figure I'd wait until—"

"Why did you leave us?"

Salazar sighs. "Why did I leave you. Isn't that the question."

"Don't play games with me, Slytherin."

He raises his eyebrows. "Slytherin?" he echoes. "You're really upset. Or you're flirting. One of the two."

"_Salazar._"

"I left because I wasn't making you happy, Rena. And you know it."

"I was happy."

He has the nerve to laugh. "I came home drunk more often than not. I left you by yourself all day to raise our child. I made shady deals that put me in trouble with the bloody law." He shakes his head. "You were _so much better off _without me. Quite honestly, leaving was the best way to protect you."

The rain is picking up.

"I _am _better off without you," she says. "So why are you here?"

"To check up on you. See how things turned out." He shrugs. "I still love you."

(He admits it like it's _easy_, like it's _obvious_, and she wants to _kill him_.)

"Things turned out fine." She lowers her wand, wishing she knew what to _say_. "I have a husband. A new daughter. My own family, without any screaming or fighting or—"

She cuts herself off before she can say _kissing in the rain_, because her favorite thing about Sal used to be that he caught her off guard with his spontaneous acts of love, and her least favorite thing about her new husband is the way he doesn't seem to feel _anything_, and she has no idea what her reaction will be if Sal says _I love you _one more time.

"Okay." Sal raises his hands in surrender and takes a step backwards. "Fine. I've checked in. I've seen. I'm gone." He looks at her for a long moment before turning around and starting back toward the road.

"I want to teach at your school."

Rowena doesn't know who is more surprised to hear the words come out of her mouth: Sal, or herself.

He turns back to her. "You want to teach?"

She nods. "If it keeps me close to Helena. And I'll bring my other daughter as a student."

Sal is smirking the way he always used to when he thought he was calling her bluff. "This isn't what you want, Rena."

Her wand is back up. "Yes, it is."

He narrows his eyes challengingly, still smirking. "You'd have to be able to put up with me," he says. "You'd have to be able to walk by me in the corridors without pulling your wand like that."

"You'd have to put up with my new husband," she counters, "and considering you still love me, I think our hardships will be evenly matched."

Sal's eyebrows shoot up. "If things weren't—you know, the way they are—I'd—"

She hears the soft _k _on his lips before he pulls back the word "kiss."

"I want to teach at your school," she says again. "I could do it. I'm a quick learner. I'm an excellent teacher."

He sighs. "I can't make these decisions on my own, Rena. You'll have to ask the other two founders of the school. Godric Gryffindor and Helga Hufflepuff."

"I'm asking _you_." (She doesn't know why she's being so stubborn, but she probably learned it from Helena; Helena, who used to declare to all who would listen that she was a _Slytherin_; Helena, who is a Gryffindor now; Helena, who was born to a Ravenclaw and grew up surrounded by Blacks and always wanted nobody but her _father_.)

"If it's up to me, you're in," says Sal. "I'll ask the others tomorrow. They've been saying we could use a fourth professor."

Rowena inhales slowly through her nose. "Thank you."

He smiles, and it's gentle and careful and all the things he isn't. "I think I owe it to you. I _am_ sorry, Rena. If I could do it over, I wouldn't have left."

He turns to go, and she can't help it: "Sal?"

He faces her. "Yes?"

"You said you left to protect me?"

A nod.

"Do you _mean _that?"

Another nod, and there is no dishonesty in his face.

"I believe you," she whispers. "I don't forgive you. But I believe you."

His careful smile widens into one that's roguish and handsome and everything she remembers. "Any way I can earn that forgiveness someday?"

She can't help the smile that creeps across her face. "When I'm teaching at your school, we'll talk about it."

* * *

"Sal," Rowena says a year later to the man who is not her husband.

He looks up from the Potions textbook he's been writing out for his students. "Rena."

She comes into his office, trying and failing to keep the smile off her face. "The divorce is finalized."

"Is it?" Sal puts down his quill. "So Mr. Black is out of your hair at last?"

She nods. "He didn't even seem to mind. He's had his eyes on Catherine Rosier for years."

"Well." Sal stands. "Good news for him."

"Yes."

He moves closer to her. "Better news for me, though, I think," he says, and he catches her in a kiss.

(There is a thunderstorm outside, but no one is walking away this time.)

* * *

_[Gift-Giving Extravaganza 2015: Rowena/Salazar]_

_[2015 New Years Resolution Challenge: Founders Era]_


End file.
